1
Travelling StoriesDigital storytelling with young people studying and working abroad
2
Co-funded by Erasmus + Programme of the European Union
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Index
Intro Federica Pesce ............................................................................. 5
Section I Digital Storytelling Panorama ............................................... 7What do we mean by Digital Storytelling? Joe Lambert ................................................................................. 8Digital Storytelling and Transformative Experience/ Transformative Learning Joe Lambert .................................................................................. 9The project StoryA Antonia Silvaggi ......................................................................... 11StoryA at a glance ......................................................................... 13
Section II Best Practices ............................................................................ 14Italy Melting Pro ................................................................................... 15USA StoryCenter ................................................................................... 18Brazil Museu da Pessoa ........................................................................... 21South Africa Cape Peninsula University of Technology .................................. 24Austria Digital story Vienna .................................................................... 27UK University of Brighton .................................................................. 31Sweden The Stockholm School of Arts /Kulturskolan Stockholm ........... 35
4
Portugal Media Shots ................................................................................. 38Belgium Perspectives ................................................................................... 41
Section III Stories behind stories ............................................................ 44Tutto quello che posso contenere/ Everything that I can contain By Luna Cesari, IT ..................................................................... 45For Aron By Ashley Kinard, USA .............................................................. 48Do outro lado do oceano By Sofia, BR ................................................................................. 51No Name By Evelyn Yobana, Colombia ....................................................... 54Finding My Passion By Laura Wahlhütter, Austria ..................................................... 57“AAFS” By Sophie Gilbert, UK ................................................................ 60A film by Gustav Hällegårdh By Gustav Hällegårdh, Sweden .................................................. 63FLY By Klara Schouwink, Germany .................................................. 65Cerezal By Georgeta, Romania ................................................................ 68
Section IV Prompts – Top Tips and Handy Hints .............................. 70Written prompts ........................................................................ 71Conversation /raise prompts ................................................. 72Object /pictures ......................................................................... 73“Other”: (Sounds, Act, Smell, Food and Change) ............................... 74
Section V Facilitator Biographies .......................................................... 75
5
IntroFederica Pesce
This booklet is for people interested in how to use digital storytelling to capitalise competences acquired abroad by young people.
The experience of living and learning or working abroad has often been linked with aspects of personal growth, the development of identity, and moral values, intellectu-al enhancement, the improvement of language skills and intercultural competences.
These abilities are unlikely to be communicated with the standard tools at the disposal of young people (Curricu-lum Vitae or similar) and consequently can remain hidden. Stories have a strong emotional power which can be used to convey to others this set of personal and professional principles. Digital storytelling is one of the most attractive mechanisms of communicating content, values and cultur-al practices, but it is also a process that can “democratize” knowledge; enabling people to share and rebuild it collec-tively.
With this in mind, the idea for this project was to use digital storytelling to help young people who travelled abroad to raise their own awareness of the competences they had acquired during their experience abroad and also to reflect on their experiences.
These guidelines can be used by organizations that run youth exchanges or study visits to monitor their activities, or as an inspiration to those youngsters who have had an experience abroad and would like to learn a new way of developing innovative Curriculum Vitae.
Finally, this is an interesting tool for anyone who wants to look at the practices of digital storytelling through the experiences of nine organizations around the world under the umbrella of the StoryA project.
6
Click here to watch allthe storieson youtube
The booklet is divided in 5 sections.
Section I offers an overview of the issues related to digital storytelling methodology. The word storytelling is frequent-ly misused and this leads to misunderstandings. In order to avoid ambivalence and to be clear about the framework of this project, we open with an article by the forerunner of the movement, Joe Lambert, founder of the Story-Center.
A separate paragraph is dedicated to the project StoryA, without which this booklet could not have been produced.
Section II is a collection of best practices, gathering the experience gained in nine countries through the delivery of digital storytelling workshops. The biographies and con-tact details of the expert facilitators of these workshops are in Section V.
Section III focuses on the stories behind the creation of a single digital story. One digital story per workshop was selected as a sample of the full experience made in one single country. The entire collection of stories is available at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrE2ITpiUwLE7v-bU_svo1sQ/playlists
Section IV is a compendium of prompts used by facilita-tors during the workshops. It is a handy guideline to start thinking about the stories to tell 1.
Now, all you need to do is to read the e-booklet, enjoy it and practice digital storytelling yourself!
1 We thank Daniel Weinshenker of the StoryCenter for this reflexion point.
7
Section I Digital Storytelling Panorama
8
What do we mean by Digital Storytelling? Joe Lambert
If you are unfamiliar with the model, Digital Storytelling, as evolved by the Center for Digital Storytelling (now Sto-ryCenter) in California, has two major components: Digital Stories are short films of 2–5 minutes in length, usually individually conceived, designed and edited by students or novices, supported by media educators. The films are based on a brief (250–375 word) script, written and re-corded by the participant in their own voice. The stories are generally from personal experience and the films are created using still images (although occasionally moving images are used), an accompanying soundtrack and a lim-ited set of special effects and graphic elements.
Digital Stories are usually developed through a group learning process designed to support a range of skill levels and interests. The learning process generally includes a discussion of what makes an effective or successful story, a group script discussion (story circle), individual and group production, hardware and software support, and training, and the completion of a draft project with accompanying screening and celebration.
Historically, digital storytelling has emphasized the first person voice and its role as a purely personal artistic expression, however, the approach has also been used in countless educational, community, health and social ser-vices, human rights, environmental, and grassroots activist contexts. The stories become documents used by commu-nication professionals to address social issues large and small. The process has also become a recognized creative approach for assisting personal crisis and trauma survi-vors in their recovery.
9
Digital Storytelling and Transformative Experience/Transformative LearningJoe Lambert
As suggested, in the two decades since our model of Dig-ital Storytelling was first explored in Europe, our pro-cess-centred participatory media education model has found broad application in formal and informal learning.
Fundamental to this model was a commitment of the facilitating educators to provide participants an opportu-nity to work in a group setting to reflect on specific trans-formative experiences, whether they were major moments of accomplishment, life-changing experience, addressing injustices and socially constructed stigma, or personal or societal traumas and losses.
Not every subject lends itself to transformative reflec-tion and learning, but the experience of intercultural exchange provided by international education and work opportunities, has been shown to be a rich territory for Digital Storytelling practices. The StoryAbroad project sought to take advantage of the specific workshop mod-el to allow students and young adults to reflect on their experiences in a group learning process, where prior judgments, mindsets, ideologies, and perspectives could be assessed and challenged. In many of these StoryAbroad stories, the idea of re-evaluation from original expectation is explicit, and during the course of the group activity, participants were often sharing how they brought back new understanding about a cultural other, that had re-shaped their understanding of their current worldview and the actions they now take based on their abroad ex-perience. As part of relating the StoryA work to ongoing educational discussions, it is perhaps helpful to situate the Digital Storytelling model within the formal framework of Jack Mezirow’s Transformative Learning theory. The main argument for the application of Transformative Learning experiences is the degree in which they allow learners to become aware of the extant ways of thinking. Mezirow puts emphasis on the dislocating quality of certain
10
learning situations, where learners have to rely on intu-itive, as opposed to apriori conscious analytic strategies i.e. their existing ‘common sense’. Many of the storytelling processes follow Mezirow’s Transformational Learning steps:
• a disorientating dilemma;
• self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt or shame;
• a critical assessment of assumptions;
• recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared;
• exploration of options for new roles, relationships and action;
• planning a course of action;
• acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans;
• provisional trying of new roles;
• building competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships;
• a re-integration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s new perspective(Mezirow in Illeris, Contemporary Theories of Learning, Routledge, 2009, p.94)
As you watch many of the stories you have a sense that being put into a new social and cultural situation is a fun-damentally disorienting dilemma, and that many of these experiences do cause shifts in roles, acquisition of new skills, and the kind of tests that lead to new confidence that lasts an entire lifetime. As specifically intended in this project, the assessment of these transformative experi-ences by youth through story sharing can be part of their identifying important skills they took from the experience, as well as demonstrating their resiliency as learners and future professionals.
This has been an exciting project for all the participating organizations, made even more inspiring by those of us participating from outside the European context. We are confident digital storytelling will see expanded use in the context of international and intercultural education and job development experience.
11
The project StoryA Antonia Silvaggi
The project began when Federica from Melting Pro, and Joe Lambert from Storycenter were looking into ways of collaborating cross-continentally in the spring of 2014. Beside digital storytelling they had another project in common that was using digital storytelling to tell personal stories about professional life and to create digital curricu-lar stories.
An opportunity came up with the new Erasmus pro-gramme 2 – the strand Capacity Building in the field of youth, which aimed to foster international collaboration and strengthen youth workers’ competencies. Their application was successful and the grant approved.
The partners met for the first time in Brighton, UK and following that in the USA for The International Digital Storytelling conference organised by the Storycenter. The final meeting, to introduce other youth organisations to the potentialities of digital storytelling and to discuss and share the project results, will be in South Africa, Cape Town, in March 2016.
This project has been a learning experience for all the partners. During the project we asked young people from different backgrounds and nationalities to use digital storytelling to self-evaluate the competences they acquired abroad. What is particularly interesting, given that all re-ceived the same brief, is the diversity of the results.
The concept of travelling abroad is something that we take for granted in Europe where it is easy to travel freely across borders, but in countries outside of Europe it is an opportunity only few young people have access to. Travel-ling abroad is an educational experience; living or working abroad, for a short or long period, provides unconscious learning that can be turned into a more useful learning experience if you encourage people to reflect on and share their experiences.
2 To find out more go to https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/erasmus-plus/actions/cooperation-for-innovation-and-ex-change-good-practices_en
12
The StoryA project aimed to improve the quality and recognition of youth work and non-formal learning by en-couraging young people to turn work and life experience gained in foreign countries into learning opportunities, recognizing the skills and key competences acquired dur-ing the mobility.
13
www.storya.eu
StoryA at a glance
Title STORY Abroad: validating and connecting expe-riences of working and studying abroad through digital storytelling (StoryA)Duration 01.04.2015–31.03.2016EU Funding Programme Erasmus + Key-Action 2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices – Capacity building in the field of youthPartnership:Melting Pro Laboratorio per la cultura (IT) StoryCenter (USA)Media Shots CRL (PT) University of Brighton (UK) Verein Digital Story Vienna (AT) Perspectives (BE)Museo da Pessoa (BR)Stockholm School of Arts / Kulturskolan Stockholm (SE) Cape Peninsula University of Technology (South Africa) EU funding (80%) 145.000Website: www.storya.eu Watch the digital stories on:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrE2ITpiUwLE7v-bU_svo1sQ/playlists
14
Section IIBest Practices
15
ww
w.m
eltin
gpro
.org
Italy Melting Pro
A. Who are we are? Where? Context?Melting Pro is an organisation working in the arts and cul-tural sector in Rome, Italy. We link theory to practice and we like to experiment with new ideas and methodologies to increase cultural participation.
We work in collaboration with other organisations to maximize the impact of our activities. On StoryA we worked with Porta Futuro3, an innovative job centre in Rome, and with the European project Your First Eures Job, which equips and helps young people to find job opportu-nities abroad.
Together we launched a national call and we received applications from all over Italy. Digital storytelling is a new practice in Italy and subsequently it is difficult to re-cruit people. This opportunity was open to all young peo-ple under 35 years old from a variety of sectors including engineering, photography, marketing and cultural man-agement.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?Following the impact of the European project Kvalues 4 – in which digital storytelling was applied to create a digital curricular story – we wanted to help young people to reflect profoundly on their experiences abroad; to reflect on the competences acquired and how they could be shown on their Curriculum Vitae; and to provide a tool to better pro-mote themselves to a future employer.
Kvalues evolved a way in which young people could make people more aware of their competences through developing their e-curriculum vitae.
3 We would like to thank Claudia Foschi and all the team at Porta Futuro for giving us the opportunity to host the workshop and believing in the methodology https://www.portafuturo.it/.
We would like to thank Dario Manna Città Metropolitana Roma and Marie Debicki Your first EURES Job for their collaboration http://www.yourfirsteuresjob.eu/en/home
4 http://meltingpro.org/en/progetti-en/european/kvalues/
16
We believe that travelling is an informal learning expe-rience, an opportunity that should be given to all young people regardless of their background since it reinforces transversal skills such as adaptability, social skills, net-working and in the long term supports them to become more independent and develop their language skills.
The participants all agreed that engaging in the digital storytelling project improved their self–esteem. Nearly all participants were in search of their first job or more stable employment and felt that the process helped them to focus on their positive attributes, understanding what they were good at and how to better present themselves. They said they could highlight their competences better by using a creative approach.
C. What Happened?The StoryA digital storytelling workshop was held on 6–10 July 2015. We scheduled a five-day workshop which fol-lowed the usual format for a digital storytelling workshop: briefing, storycircle, writing, recording, editing and final sharing.
We invited external experts5 to bring multiple voices to the workshop and to discuss the importance of enhancing an experience abroad and to give participants more net-working opportunities. Experts on how to write a Curric-ulum Vitae, people from the previous Kvalues project and cultural managers working on a European mobility project attended. We wanted to give an overview of storytelling and its use in social media and film literacy. Our aim was to focus on the process of self-evaluating the competences they acquired abroad, but also to produce good quality stories.
D. What worked?The storytelling games, practised in the story circle, not only helped participants to tell a personal story but also to reflect on how the experience has changed them. For some, their starting point was the metaphor of the suit-case, referring to what you are bringing back from the experience.
The games also helped them to focus on the new compe-tences they had acquired and helped to make them con-
5 We would like to thank all the experts that came and gave their contributions: Armando De Lucia CRM partners, Simone Pacini Fattiditeatro, Maria Luigia Cusani and Catia Leoni Porta Futuro, Claudio Tosi. CESV, Simone Moraldi. Film Literacy Expert, Marie Debicki Your first EURES Job, Claudia Cavalieri and Emanuela Pigliacelli from Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, that presented the Upskill project ,and our invaluable intern Caterina Cannuni.
17
scious of their potential and able to position themselves more strategically in the job market. They also appreciated the creativity of the games and the sharing process. They suggested that for them it was also a way of acquiring new social and digital skills.
Most of the participants stated that it was a way of developing their professional profile by learning how important it is to ‘narrate’ oneself and to communicate to the external world. The collaboration with Porta Futuro and Your First Eures Job gave institutional support, support-ed the goals of the project and supplied an opportunity to show participants further opportunities to travel abroad through the European Commission.
E. What were challenges?The main challenge was to ensure that young people un-derstood the power of the digital storytelling methodolo-gy. Unfortunately the message was not communicated to many since we had difficulties in recruiting participants, particularly due to the timing of the project as in July Uni-versity students sit their exams and it was therefore diffi-cult for them to attend. Originally we thought that we were going to have more people from the Your First Eures Job catchment basin, but as a result of the success of the pro-gramme many of its participants have found employment opportunities abroad and were not available to participate in this project.
The technical aspect of the project was a challenge; participants brought their own computers and we faced a variety of technical problems. However, we managed to overcome these.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now? The central learning was that young people really need time to talk about themselves and build their self-esteem. The current economic crisis really makes it hard for them to think positively. They need to be motivated; to share ex-periences in a collaborative working environment and this was what participants appreciated at the workshop.
As facilitators we learned to improve the way we work with young people and to switch into a listening mode. We also learned to challenge their, and our, assumptions.
18
ww
w.st
oryc
ente
r.org
USA StoryCenter
A. Who are we are? Where? Context?StoryCenter decided to collaborate with two university campuses, the Study Abroad Program at the University of California (UCB) in Berkeley, California, http://studya-broad.berkeley.edu/, and the Office of Global Engagement at Oklahoma City University (OKCU). http://www.okcu.edu/academics/studyabroad/ The projects were done as a one-day mini-workshop for three participants from UC Berkeley, and two sessions – a three-day session and a one-day mini-workshop – with a group of twelve participants from OKCU. The approach was similar: introductions to the methods and approach to digital storytelling, and working with participants to write, record, and edit their short videos.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?Our interest was to develop a discussion about the use of Digital Storytelling within the context of Study Abroad in Higher Education in the US. While Digital Storytelling has found some acceptance as a means for young people to reflect on these experiences, we wanted to create some new examples of how these stories could assist with the students own aspirations for their academic and profes-sional careers. In both cases, we worked with the campus based Study Abroad offices to help us to identify partici-pants motivated to both create a story, and reflect on the experience of creating a story. We also wanted to explore the difference in stories from a context like Berkeley, Cal-ifornia on the US West Coast, and Oklahoma City in the central plains area of the United States.
C. What Happened?Workshops were scheduled originally in July and then Au-gust in Berkeley, at StoryCenter offices. Workshops were
19
scheduled for November and January in OKCU. The par-ticipants were chosen from suggestions from the Study-Abroad office in Berkeley, and from a mix of students of Professor Hessler and recent Global Engagement students at OKCU. All participants completed stories.
D. What worked?The stories reflected a genuine range of experiences, and messages, about what participants take from their inter-national experiences. At the OKCU site, Dr. Hessler used the three-day session to mentor students as co-facilitators, preparing them to use the digital storytelling workshop event as a way to spark ongoing dialogue about interna-tional and intercultural experiences.
E. What were challenges?The Berkeley workshop was originally to be held just as students were returning to campus, with the hope we could find students who had over the summer been on in-ternational study programs. Our original hope was to have eight participants in the Berkeley workshop and eight in the OKCU workshop. However, we had several last minute cancellations, so we decided to increase the number of participants for the OKCU workshops. In Oklahoma the main challenge was simply time compression: the sto-ry sharing process, once begun, can open a floodgate of recollections and issues worth exploring in more detail. The digital storytelling workshop gives participants a way to concentrate on a single, important moment to explore in depth, but it also helps us identify additional moments, challenges, experiences that deserve attention. This is not a problem; indeed, it is a valuable outcome. But this con-sequence carries with it great responsibility: we educators must seek additional ways to help participants connect with supportive partners and creative outlets for reflecting on and expressing the powerful and complex experiences that arise when living and learning in other countries.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now? The interest in DST for Study Abroad reflections remains quite high, and the participants were definitely engaged in the process. One important topic that came up repeatedly in Oklahoma was the ‘re-entry syndrome’: students return to their hometowns with too many stories to tell, often
20
a profoundly altered sense of themselves, and they have difficulty adjusting to their everyday lives. They experience an associated communication challenge: their experiences are often too complex to fit into everyday conversations, especially with friends and family who have not travelled extensively, and so they tend to default to fairly superficial or artificially upbeat descriptions of touristy experiences when inside they have more complicated experiences to communicate. The narrower versions of their stories are often what initially bubble up as DST topics because they are simpler and more rehearsed. So the OKCU team (Dr. Hessler, the Global Engagement director, and their under-graduate student researchers) are developing a way to use guided reflection techniques before and
after the DST experience to help participants process their recollections in a deeper and more sustained way. In upcoming DST workshops they plan to incorporate assess-ment tools such as focus groups and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Intercultural Knowledge rubric to help participants make further con-nections between their initial “story-worthy” experiences and on-going intercultural interactions.
21
ww
w.m
useu
dape
ssoa
.net
Brazil Museu da Pessoa
A. Who are we? Where? Context?The Museu da Pessoa, a virtual museum, was founded in 1991 with the objective of providing an opportunity for an-yone to record and preserve their life story as an element of social memory. According to the museum’s underlying principle, these stories comprise a source of information that facilitates social intervention in a diverse range of areas including research, education, culture and the devel-opment of public policies.
Based in São Paulo, Brazil, it has developed an alter-native method for collecting and systematizing the life stories people tell. Having developed around 220 projects, it currently has a collection of 16,000 recorded life stories and 72,000 digitalized photos and documents.
The museum got involved in Digital Storytelling Meth-odology when Joe Lambert, facilitator from the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), came to Brazil in 2006. Through Joe Lambert, the team at the Museu da Pessoa had the chance to experience this methodology and it was imme-diately chosen as the core for the One Million Youth Life Stories Initiative.
The One Million Youth Life Stories initiative – which took place from May 2006 to October 2009 – changed conditions for Brazilian young people through digital storytelling.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why did it happen the way it happened?The Museu da Pessoa’s goals in the STORYA project was to use Digital Storytelling with young people so that they themselves could evaluate their own travel experienc-es and to encourage them to reflect upon their informal learning during experiences abroad.
Another goal was to improve the Digital Storytelling methodology – which was used extensively by the Museu da Pessoa – through the exchange of experiences with the consortium’s partners and promotion of Digital Storytell-
22
ing as a tool for use in memory projects. The workshop participants were expected to use the DS methodology in their youth organizations or on their personal projects.
Three youth organizations (‘Fundação Gol de Letra’, ‘Cala Boca já Morreu’ and ‘Instituto Querô’) were asked to invite 10 youngsters who had experienced overseas travel to participate in the workshop. In addition, an online ap-plication was made available on the Museu’s website to fill the 10 remaining places.
C. What happened?We received more than 70 subscriptions to participate in the workshop. Fourteen youngsters from all over the coun-try participated in the digital storytelling workshop in São Paulo. Four of them were invited by the youth organiza-tions and 10 applied to participate. By the end of the work-shop, the group planned how to disseminate the stories produced in three cultural events:
1. a cultural event at the Museu da Pessoa head office that was designed to share the stories produced.
2. a get-together to share stories and reflect on the methodology – 70 people took part in the get-together.
3. a cultural activity at a cultural centre in São Paulo. The stories were screened on a modified van parked in the cultural centre’s garden. The van is a ‘library on wheels’ and people who visited the cultural centre listened to the stories and found out more about the StoryA initiative.
D. What worked?The recruitment strategy was very successful, with more than 70 subscriptions to attend the workshop being re-ceived. The profile and engagement of the participants were indispensable to achieving the proposed goals.
As a result, five of the fourteen participants plan to use the DS methodology in the future: Danilo and Gabriela will use it to record stories as part of the ‘Walk And Talk Project’ and ‘Mundo a Volta Project’, respectively; Marce-lo is planning to use life stories to encourage people to volunteer for the social organizations he works for; and Weverton held a DS workshop at the ‘Fundação Gol de Letra’ with the participation of 15 young people. One of the participants works as a documentarist and another as a journalist, and they plan to increase their work with digital storytelling, whilst the others would like to use it in the future but have no plans yet.
23
E. What were challenges?Technology has always been a challenge to the Museu da Pessoa. On the one hand, we want the workshop to pro-duce well-produced stories but, on the other, it is also im-portant that the participants are independently able to use the methodology in their social organizations and in their own projects. The Museu da Pessoa seeks to balance tech-nical quality and access, so we therefore sought open-ac-cess, or cheap and available equipment and software for video recording and editing.
For the first time we decided to use iPads to produce the stories due to their similarity to the editing software found on cellular phones. However, we had internet problems in relation to downloading pictures during the workshop and the editing process took much longer than planned. Be-sides this, the quality of the stories was not as good as we would have liked.
F. What have we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now?Our experience in the Story Abroad project allowed us to learn things that are proving to be very important for the activities of the Museu da Pessoa in the area of Digital Storytelling methodology training. As mentioned earlier, the participants’ ability to produce good stories through the use of accessible technologies that can be multiplied has been the organization’s central challenge in relation to training in this particular methodology.
In relation to this, the experience of the partners in the project increased our understanding of training strategies that can be used to encourage the production of good sto-ries, whilst using accessible technologies. In some of the reports produced by our partners, activities were under-taken using photos and texts with the intention of increas-ing the participants’ aesthetic repertoire before beginning work on the production of the stories.
In much the same way, working with smaller groups and planning more time for the audio-visual projects are two things that will certainly be considered at the next work-shop.
Lastly, the finalization of the videos was also a focus of learning, with English-language subtitles, the use of logos and the audio quality being elements that will be seen as priorities at upcoming workshops.
24
ww
w.c
put.a
c.za
South Africa Cape Peninsula University of Technology
A. Who are we? Where? Context?The project was undertaken as a partnership between the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and Digital Storytelling South Africa, a private company spe-cialising in digital storytelling facilitation mainly in the NGO sector. CPUT, with around 30,000 students, is the largest of four higher education institutions in South Afri-ca’s Western Cape Province. It is relatively young, having been created through a merger of various colleges and technikons in 2005. A growing number of CPUT’s students come from the rest of Africa and it is largely these students studying away from their home countries who participated in the project.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?It is rare for South African students to study abroad: few can afford to travel, and there are substantial barriers to migration for Africans wanting to study in Europe or the US. However, Cape Town hosts several language schools that attract young people from all over the world to learn English, and we decided to focus on the experiences of these students.
We ran three workshops, one in a private English lan-guage school and two with foreign students enrolled in formal English courses at CPUT.
South Africa battles with xenophobia, so one of our goals was to collect stories of foreign students’ experienc-es as a tool to challenge anti-migrant assumptions. By con-trasting the experiences at an expensive private language school and at CPUT, which offers courses at much lower prices, we also tried to collect a wide range of stories from students of privileged and less privileged backgrounds. The experiences of the CPUT students were also fed back to the International Office which is responsible for the well-being of these students.
25
C. What Happened?We ran three workshops: One at International House lan-guage school and two at different CPUT campuses. A total of 21 participants completed 17 digital stories. Most partic-ipants came from West Africa (Angola, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo-Brazzaville), but there were also students from the Middle East, Turkey and Colombia. The workshops were planned to run over five half-days, but in each case we extended the workshops slightly to offer participants more time to work on their movies. The struc-ture of the workshops followed the typical workshop mod-el as developed by the Storycenter. Over the course of the workshop participants wrote scripts, looked for or created images (we stressed the importance of using own images rather than images found on the internet), recorded their stories and put it all together using the devices and soft-ware of their choice. We ended with a public screening of all the stories.
D. What worked?As none of these students’ first language was English, we were apprehensive about their proficiency in writing and narrating stories and offered everyone the option to work in their home language. However, all participants opted to produce stories in English. Although in some cases recording took several takes, eventually all students man-aged to produce beautiful stories, with additional English subtitles to aid understanding of different accents.
We strongly encouraged students to use or create their own pictures rather than resorting to the internet and as a result several of the stories are rich in images that give them a wider context and depth.
Other successes include: We successfully adapted to a wide range of digital literacy skills and devices; partici-pants already knew each other as classmates so trust was established before the workshop and the sharing of stories was relatively easy; and finally, because we opted to run three workshops rather than one, we had a lot of stories to choose from.
E. What were challenges?Participants brought a wide range of digital literacy skills and devices: we worked with Mac and Windows laptops (in several versions of Windows), as well as Android tablets. The bandwidth available in South Africa does not enable
26
use of WeVideo online editing software, so we used a range of software applications from PhotoStory through Sony Movie Studio and iMovie to Com-Phone Story Maker and KineMaster for Android. Some devices were so old they could not run the software desired, and some venues had no wifi which made installing and registering software dif-ficult. The facilitators had to display a high level of flexibil-ity to support all students equally. Partly as a result of the technical challenges, the quality of the movies varied wide-ly. In addition, as these students were away from home, many had no access to their own historical images. In one workshop with mainly older students doing an advanced teaching course, it was difficult to break out of the famili-arity of academic writing and explore more creative writ-ing processes, which led to a number of similar story lines.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now?The main lesson for us was the amount of support needed in projects where we have no control over the technical tools available. Usually we run workshops with one facil-itator and up to 10 participants. However, in this project more technical support would have enabled the facilitator to spend less time troubleshooting and more time helping students craft their stories. An alternative would have been to hire a venue that supplied standardised equipment of a suitable quality, tech support and adequate bandwidth. Both of these options would have increased the cost: doing digital storytelling in resource-poor contexts is more expensive than it is in wealthier environments where the skills and tools needed are more readily available. In future projects it might be worth allocating additional budget to allow for this.
We also learned how important it was to keep the pro-cess joyful and fun while also challenging our participants to push their boundaries in terms of creativity and digital skills. Working with young people outside formal course structures is interesting. In the best case their passion takes over and they spend many hours perfecting their stories – some students did not want to leave when the sessions were over. In the worst case, where students are not particularly committed, they quickly disengage from the process.
27
ww
w.d
igita
lstor
y.at
Austria Digital story Vienna
A. Who are we? Where? Context?Digital story Vienna was founded in 2009 in Vienna. We started after an EU Grundtvig project with Steve Bellis, at Wrexham college in Wales.
Our legal form of organisation is an independent and non-profit club. We started with courses for free at the College of Higher Education of Vienna and adult educa-tion centres. Our reputation grew with our stories and now we operate four to five workshops per year with different partners. Digital story Vienna is now well established and our facilitators are trained and experienced.
Our biggest event so far was being part of the festival “we are Vienna, a quarter festival”: Concerts, theatre, com-edy, cinema, workshops etc. for free, targeted at ‘the man on the street’: 23 days, 23 districts; workshops took place in museums, public gardens, old shops…
We created a map of stories that took place in the vari-ous districts of Vienna (wienergeschichten.at).
In 2014 and 2015 we curated digital storytelling-retro-spectives (Joe Lambert and Daniel Meadows) at Vienna’s short film festival (dot.dot.dot, formerly ‘espressofilmfesti-val’).
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?Our main goal was to bring our experience and perspec-tive from Austria to a worldwide digital storytelling project with young people. We had built a solid base of trainers and a network of contacts with institutions of education and NGOs. We used this network to find open minded young people with experience abroad, and invited them to the workshops.
In our workshops the trainers shared their own expe-riences abroad – many years of change in student culture and travelling. This was a great way of breaking the ice.
28
The participants formed a community, told their stories, shared their experiences and discovered what their experi-ences had in common and where they differed.
Two types of stories were planned: Austrians abroad and foreign students who came to Austria.
To find a new way of recording stories, we introduced snippets of interviews to the stories, so the sound of voices is different: you can hear spontaneous reactions/students laughing etc. It sounds quite different from reading a writ-ten text.
C. What happened?After a short coming together phase the storycircles start-ed. Soon the common experiences began to appear: a search for freedom, changing your life, learning foreign languages and acquiring new skills, looking for adventures and strengthening one’s self-confidence and self-aware-ness. For most of the participants it was their first chance to reflect on their time abroad in a group of strangers and this made them realize how much these experiences and skills gained abroad had helped them to get along in their life. After an introduction to creative writing and the genre of short storytelling we started the writing phase by giv-ing them the challenge of writing a postcard about their experiences abroad to a friend. The participants worked with their own laptops – and working on different laptops with different software was a big challenge. We introduced different free movie and sound editing software and we helped with writing the text, recording story sound files, recording interviews, searching for free music and editing the movies.
D. What worked? SuccessesOur network with education organisations and NGOs, es-pecially with four faculties of University of Vienna and the OEAD (Austrian Student Exchange Organisation) worked well. Our trainers were motivated and had a lot of trav-el experiences around the world themselves, which they shared with the participants.
Ice breaking with some personal stories worked very well. The generation gap was closed and trust was built through the stories. The hardest moment of every work-shop was how to get an oral story into a written form. We recorded the story circles and cut sound files for each student, which helped them to remember what they had
29
said in the story circle. Most students had a lot of photos from his or her time abroad; it was very satisfying to help them choose the best shots from hundreds of good photos. Some students brought movies with them, often on their phones. Working with these movies brought something new to our digital stories!
E. What were challenges?Because of strict university rules our trainers who work at universities could not integrate Story Abroad in their classes. So we invited the students to our weekend-work-shops. One was at very short notice and we had to cancel it and find another date. This was a real challenge, as June and early July are the busiest months for students.
For a small organization like ours, the biggest challenge was promoting the workshops and finding enough partici-pants: We used our personal networks (mailing lists, social media), we advertised in the newsletters of two institutes of the University of Vienna as well as the OEAD, at Vien-na’s short film festival “dot.dot.dot”– but we discovered that word-of-mouth was most effective. Finding institu-tional partners for workshops was a challenge.
Cooperation with an American journalism faculty with exchange students was cancelled last minute. Another col-laboration with an NGO for unaccompanied young refu-gees was ended after the first round of workshops because of the refugee crisis in Austria, which became the focus of all attention and effort in the sector.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now? There is very little culture of storytelling in Austria, nor a tradition of first-person narrative or creative writing provision in school curriculums. So the techniques of storytelling – keeping it short, summarizing and shaping the story – were unfamiliar and we felt we needed more time to work on this aspect. As a result, some of the stories are quite long and more like short documentaries – but we didn’t want to be too strict or discourage the participants.
In the beginning, the students wanted short workshops. But once they started to tell their stories and show their pictures, it was hard to stop them. Many students had material for more stories. In the end, they all expressed an interest in longer workshops, as they felt they needed more time to tell their stories.
30
We learned that providing a free digital storytelling workshop is not enough for many students as they wanted credit points for their work so that it can count towards their qualification – we therefore need institutional coop-eration for future projects.
Our teaching experience is difficult to transfer to other teachers without ‘train the trainers’ workshops, so from this perspective one year for a project like this was quite short.
All of the cultural activities provided created an interest in digital storytelling however, which is a good start for follow up projects. Bringing together most of the partici-pants and facilitators for the public screening was a great experience. It is so different to watching digital stories on the internet! We all enjoyed the evening, the exchange of ideas, experience and creativity – it was a great moment!
31
ww
w.b
right
on.a
c.uk
UK University of Brighton
A. Who are we ? Where? Context?The University of Brighton (UoB) is located on the south coast of England approximately sixty miles from London and is home to some 21,000 undergraduate and postgrad-uate students. Digital Storytelling initiatives take place at the university through funded projects and undergraduate teaching. From 2013–2015, UoB was the lead partner in Silver Stories, a research partnership of nine organisations from six countries that explored the use of digital story-telling as a means to train health and social care profes-sionals working with older people and gathered stories from different community groups across the participating countries. The 2015–16 ‘Moving Stories’ project, is a com-munity-university partnership funded project developing the use of digital storytelling as a means to facilitate em-pathy and understanding between education professionals and local secondary school migrant children.
The university works closely with DigiTales, a research company hosted by Goldsmiths College, University of London, that has been leading cutting edge digital story-telling projects since 2005. This includes work with a range of different community organisations and groups under-represented in the media, including young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, Black and Minority Ethnic groups, older people and users and survivors of mental health services.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?UoB and DigiTales worked closely together to deliver the UK components of StoryA. Our primary goal was to take advantage of the opportunity to work with a group of young people over an extended period of time on a sharply focussed research question.
Our view was that the longer time period created scope
32
to establish relationships with young people by introduc-ing them to digital storytelling before they went abroad. They then gathered resources for their story while travel-ling before attending a production workshop to craft their stories on their return.
We were fortunate enough to be able to draw on our ex-isting relationship with the Salvation Army Housing Asso-ciation’s (SAHA) Open Talent programme which provides new creative opportunities for hard to reach young people and includes periods spent outside the UK. UoB, DigiTales and SAHA worked together to create a bespoke workshop programme for young people travelling to South Africa and the Netherlands. For most of the group, this journey was the first time they had travelled outside the UK. In summary, our key goals were to:
• Trial a two-workshop approach to Digital Storytelling. The two stages were: a) to equip participants with tech-nical (photographic) and storytelling skills prior to their travel; b) to create digital stories and provide a platform for reflection on travel experiences.
• Refine workshop methodologies to reflect better the needs of hard to reach young people.
C. What Happened?UoB commissioned DigiTales to deliver an extended two-stage workshop for the 10 young people. This started in July 2015 with a two-day workshop hosted by UoB. Young people were introduced to digital storytelling, participat-ed in storytelling exercises, worked with a professional photographer to understand some basic principles of image gathering and created a basic story using a story-board made in PowerPoint based on a treasure hunt across Brighton. The young people were given cameras so they could take pictures during their time abroad. Additional support was provided before they departed in early Oc-tober and on their return, before a three-day workshop in Goldsmiths College during December 2015. The pre-paratory work meant that this second stage could reflect immediately on the young people’s experiences travelling abroad and their reaction to it. Stories were completed within the workshop and have been shared at a screening in Goldsmiths, at the annual Media Education, Creative and Cultural Studies Association (MECCSA) conference at
33
the Canterbury Christ Church University in January 2016 and at community focussed public events in Doncaster and Brighton.
D. What worked?Initial contact with participants prior to travel helped build some relationships between facilitators, SAHA staff and young people. This was especially important given the vulnerability of some of the participants. Providing an opportunity to build photographic skills was a good addi-tion, in that it gave participants guidance in developing a ‘perceptive eye’. All participants stated that they enjoyed the process and that they gained both ‘hard’ skills (ICT) and ‘soft’ skills (working to deadline, communication) and some stated that their confidence and self-esteem improved through being able to share experiences both through story circle and through the screening and online sharing opportunities.
E. What were challenges?Because of resource challenges and uncertainties in terms of the travel opportunity, the rationale and timing of the first workshop for participants did not prepare them adequately. There was some mismatch between those who attended and those who actually went abroad. Tim-ing between the first workshop, the travel and the second workshop would have benefited from a shorter timetable to build continuity across the three activities.
Timeframe of the Digital Storytelling workshop was very tight (two and a half days) to conduct a long enough story circle and support participants who, largely, had no experience of constructing stories or using video editing before.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now? The project was successful and it should be acknowledged that we were trialling some different approaches, which in principle were positive in the outcomes they produced. However, if we were to undertake a similar project in the future we would consider the following:
• Have a stronger focus in the pre-travel workshop as a ‘baseline’ activity to discuss in greater depth than was possible, their anticipations for travel and to build a
34
sense of the digital storytelling as a part of the overall travel project;
• Conduct mini-interviews before the travel (we did this after the travel during the DS workshop) to gather a ‘be-fore’ as well as an ‘after’ snapshot of each individual.
• Build on photo activities before travel, for example using ‘photovoice’ methodology as a way of instilling a more inquisitive attitude towards surroundings: making the familiar strange, for example.
35
kultu
rsko
lan.
stoc
khol
m.s
e
Sweden The Stockholm School of Arts / Kulturskolan Stockholm
A. Who are we? Where? Context?The Stockholm School of Arts is a municipality activity within the Culture administration in the City of Stock-holm, and provides a wide range leisure activities for young people aged 6–22 years who reside in the city of Stockholm.
Courses cover a wide range of activities in music, dra-ma, dance, fine art and media. There are currently 15000 young people enrolled and the organisation hosts a staff of 350 teachers, technicians and administrative staff.
The activities include the Centre of Resources for young people with special needs. Our aim is to give all young people opportunities to participate in cultural activities and express themselves artistically regardless of their disa-bilities, family or economic circumstances.
Also we arrange in-service training and workshops for teachers, youth leaders, project managers and directors. European Voluntary Service, hosting students on work placements and organizing study visits.
Since 2002 Stockholm School of Arts has collaborated on and is coordinator of different EU-projects within the field of Youth, Education, Culture and the INTERREG pro-grammes.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?The goal of Stockholm Schools of Arts in this project was to broaden our perspectives within the different fields of Digital Storytelling, to network with the other organisa-tions and to learn from one another. It was also to acquire new skills, experiences and outcomes from the project into the Stockholm School of Arts activities and also dissem-inate information about the project to stakeholders, con-tacts and other project partners in the EU
Another goal was to share with the project partners our
36
unique methods of non-formal learning for young people, as well as good practice in coaching youngsters to explore media & art by themselves. We brought the following expe-rience to the project: (a) Since 2001, we have worked with over 10,000 youngsters in DST in socio-cultural contexts, both in national as well as international projects (b) We have managed over 30 international projects within the Education, Youth and INTERREG programmes. Finally, we really wanted to inspire young people to study and work abroad, e.g. to apply for a European Voluntary Ser-vice EU-programme preferably within the field of culture and media.
C. What Happened?We were hosting a five-day-long local training course in Stockholm, using Digital Storytelling methods with 10 youngsters and 10 youth workers. We also planned a three-day cultural event and local information campaign for staff, local stakeholders and NGOs.
D. So how did it go?There were 11 young people attending the training and also 11 stories were produced. Also youth workers with different skills were participating in the training and supported the group throughout the process6. We used drama exercises and value exercises for warming up and ice-breaking.
The local cultural event ran for two days instead of the anticipated three days. With 90 people in the audience including youth workers, staff, international guests, and young people from all over Stockholm, we had more than the expected number of visitors.
E. What worked? SuccessesThe five-day long workshop in Digital Storytelling with ad-ditional drama workshops exceeded our expectations. We were expecting that some young people would drop out from the workshop as the summer holiday was nearly at an end, but everyone attending the workshop participated from the beginning until the very end.
The thing that surprised us most during the Digital Sto-rytelling part of the project was the many different ways the participants worked with their images. Some of them drew, some made a pixilation of their drawings, some used
6 We would kindly like to thank Gunilla Forssblad, Viveka Vidhammer, Petra Howard, Bengt Åslund, Jon Halldén and Marianne Clausén, from the Stockholm School of Arts who supported different sections of the workshop.
37
moving images and some made a mix of everything. As facilitators we learned a lot from the production of these stories.
The final productions were outstanding and we were very impressed of the young people’s collaborations.
On top of that, five of the youngsters are currently ap-plying to go abroad on their EVS-internship this autumn.
E. What were challenges?The hardest challenge was to gather a group of young people who fitted the profile for the project. To find young people from socioeconomic disadvantaged areas who have already been studying or working abroad was impossible. Also to be able to gather a group like this for a project taking place over a longer period of time was hard. Young adults in their 20s as a group see rapid change. So we were happy we could find and engage with 11 young people from different parts of Stockholm.
Another challenge was the organisation of the three-day creative event. To gather the young people to present their films after they have started work or the university term has commenced and to attract sufficient visitors for three days was difficult. Eventually, we ran a two-day event with six of the 11 youngsters who attended the workshops. We had about 90 visitors so we were satisfied that we had achieved more or less what we had set out to within the frame of the project, but it was a tough.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now? If we were doing this project again, we would have com-bined the cultural event with the workshop, so that this would happen directly after the five days so that while we had all young people gathered together we would present the work for a wider audience.
Preferably we would also have only one event. We would also arrange for the young people from different countries to come together for a workshop. That would have been great for the project, to let the young people meet each other and also share their different ways of approaching the workshops.
38
ww
w.m
edia
shot
s.or
g
Portugal Media Shots
A. Who are we? Where? Context?Media Shots is based in Lisbon/Portugal and has expertise in digital storytelling and social media in both the social and corporate contexts. Their main foci are education and social causes. The organization collaborates with a broad international network of organizations within the commu-nity and education sectors, who are experimenting with and using digital storytelling to effect social change, up-skill disadvantaged people and contribute to the emerging global network of online digital stories. In Portugal, Media Shots sees one of its goals as to use projects to strengthen the national position as providers of low-cost solutions in social media and digital storytelling training.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?It was the first time that Media Shots had facilitated a digi-tal storytelling workshop about experiences of mobility. It helped us to consider several challenges within this model, concerning the presentation of the youngsters in the pres-ent open, global and crowded labour market.
We could see how effective this tool may be to self-eval-uation, particularly as a result of the reflection process, that in general none of the participants have been through before. They all stressed the new things they had found out about themselves for the first time.
Depending on the digital skills of each person, the final output may be more or less interesting, but the authentici-ty that comes out of this shared process is very useful and well adapted to this digital generation, due to its informal and creative approach
C. What Happened?Exploring the use of technology through the production of a digital story allowed most of the participants in both
39
workshops to improve their creative, social and digital skills. The digital aspect of the training enabled all to experiment with new approaches, exchange open source programs and tools, and share different perspectives of work.
Many of them stressed the importance of the story circle which allowed the sharing of perspectives and the recognition of this experiences as a potential means of recognition and validation of non-formal and informal learning. Several participants will now use the digital story produced to enrich their CV. The opportunity to socialize during the training was also one of the aspects highlight-ed by all. In general they consider that this experience increased their self-esteem and confidence through the process of self-reflection, which also showed them the im-portance of turning their travel and working experiences into learning opportunities.
D. What worked?The participants gained the ability of reflect and build a strategic narrative, which might help them to stand out. They have also learned how to to adapt this narrative to the “multimedia language” or in some cases improved on their existing knowledge of this process. Many of them had al-ready edited short movies, but they all could do something different and try new approaches, improving this previous knowledge.
In most cases, the participants made a ‘serious’ and very ‘honest’ journey into their past and were able – through reflection – to discover tangible changes precipitated by their mobility experiences. They appeared more confi-dent and with higher self-esteem at the end of the project. And for the more vulnerable, the achievements described in each story, were clearly a cause of a new self-esteem/self-perception and of new confidence. We believe the sharing process has also helped to improve both this as-pects.
E. What were challenges?Most of the participants were familiar with digital tech-nologies and some of them had previous experience of editing and using different film techniques and were used to dealing with images. During the workshop all of them started from scratch and had to start thinking in a different way. Once they started writing they became immersed in
40
the storytelling process, listening to others and reflecting upon their experiences.
Another challenge was that in some cases the partic-ipants were faced with the need to tell a story that they were still living. This aroused feelings of insecurity, which could easily be communicated across the story circle. We had to lead the participants, helping them to see beyond their own perspective.
Also, in a world of increasing insecurity for young people about employment, financial stability, profession-al growth and future achievements, a story circle about mobility experiences can take them in directions they find difficult. Dealing with these sorts of topics was an intense challenge.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now?Although it was not the target audience of our workshops, we ended up working mostly with young volunteers from EVS (European Voluntary Service). We found that they of-ten wanted to add more reflective activities to their train-ing in order to discover more about themselves and how they want to live their lives and prepare their future. These young volunteers question themselves about their place in the world, their choices they are making for the future and how they can be agents of change.
Again, throughout this project, we became aware of the effectiveness of digital storytelling workshops as a tool for reflection and to support and structure narratives. We also realised that a set of good films, narrated and presented by their protagonists, can be used in wider cultural events to promote the mobility debate and help these increasingly global citizens to find their place, identity and causes.
If we were to embark on a new project now, we would approach it with a specific audience in mind – young volunteers from EVS and other volunteers working with ONGs all over the world. In order to make this possible, it would also be important to train new facilitators to guide the dialogue between participants, by helping them to be aware of mobility challenges instead of being paralysed by the unexpected obstacles they may encounter.
41
perfo
rmat
.be
Belgium Perspectives
A. Who are we? Where? Context?‘Perspectives’ is located at Flémalle in the Meuse valley, long known for its varied industrial activity. Recent dec-ades have witnessed unprecedented closures, but also new opportunities in the region, including a new airport re-cently constructed near the border and many international companies, which have generated employment and new opportunities across the industrial basin of Liège.
The audience of ‘Perspectives’ is composed mainly of low-skilled job seekers. The training proposed was suita-ble for the pre-qualifying level, enabling a person with no degree a fresh start. This makes it possible to give trainees the chance to be reintegrated professionally or socially, and improve their personal attitude to the labour market.
B. What were our goals in the project? Why it happened the way it happened?First, we our goal was to organize the sessions with a group of workers who wanted to share their work experi-ences abroad with others. It was difficult to contact them in the Flémalle region, because we found that the people who were interested in working abroad spent much of their time abroad and were therefore unavailable to come and share their experiences.
Our project attracted some people whose schedules did not allow them to attend all the workshops. Nevertheless they were very effective because the time for reflection on the stories took precedence over technical and practical aspects of creating the stories, which forced us to deal with these outside the workshops in order to finish all the sto-ries. The participants then gave feedback on how their story had been presented and we made amendments to them.
C. What Happened?Immersion in the workshop enabled people to rediscover their experience abroad from a different perspective and
42
analyze what has meaning for them. Seeing their story, which most had not had the opportunity to express else-where, through the format of a digital story to be pub-lished, offered them a sense of a public interest in their story. They rediscovered the details, the sounds, the imag-es in the back of their minds, even if it took some time to reach them. It is a way for people to rediscover a rich seam of memory about perhaps a relative from the past; a dis-tant memory or life. Often their first reaction to the experi-ence of unearthing these memories is surprise.
One obstacle that participants had to overcome was the fear of talking too much, of saying things that might make them seem unprofessional or create other problems in the future. They are also sometimes afraid to fully express themselves because of the risk of reviving complex and long buried emotions which can be a disconcerting and uncomfortable experience.
D. What worked?The digital storytelling method has been a real support in facilitating and implementing the workshops. Although the topics approached by the participants were varied and complex, having a procedure gave them a guiding struc-ture without which it would have been very difficult to complete all these stories.
The structure is successful in organizing the thoughts of the participants because it puts limits on what can be said, and therefore clarifies ideas and insights. People tend to give too many details which weigh down the stories and lessen the understanding of listeners of the central mes-sage.
Without this method, it would have been impossible to motivate people to achieve the desired result. With the structure of the workshops we could control the time par-ticipants took to produce their stories and motivate people with a realistic expectation of finishing their story.
Creating a relaxed and friendly atmosphere was also an important factor in a successful workshop: supplying drinks and snacks when required was a necessity rather than a luxury.
E. What were challenges?Generating interest among the public was probably the most complicated thing. Even with all the efforts to publi-cize the project, people were still reluctant to participate.
43
We realized that our region had very few candidates who had had a professional experience abroad, as we said above, this is probably due to the fact that the target audi-ence whose vocation is to work abroad are often out of the country for precisely this reason. In addition, the partici-pants did not all have a high level of basic computer skills, which complicated their ability to produce their digital stories. This can result in a series of disruptions that can threaten the success of the workshop. The most successful strategy in this situation must be both multidisciplinary and rigorous enough to not seek to adapt it to each differ-ent group or individual.
F. What we learned? How would we approach the project knowing what we know now?Each person’s reality is different, however similar their ex-periences might be. Each participant has his own view of his lived experience. We cannot create a kind of classifica-tion index of stories. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to create a guide to stories through which the future par-ticipants could learn how to structure their own narrative. This could save precious time in which participants tend to come up with overly detailed explanations. The diffi-culty in coaching people to reveal personal stories is that we have to be careful not to offend them when suggesting changes/cuts to stories which may be very close to them emotionally. This is especially important if the participant is particularly insecure perhaps regarding their lack of professional qualifications. Engaging and reflecting on a story can open ‘boxes within boxes’, and reach deeply held emotions.
A guide to constructing a narrative could give partici-pants a methodological approach to focusing on the key messages of a story by stripping away extraneous details, however important they may seem, to focus on the central story and reduce the autobiographical back story.
The diffusion of knowledge from stories could follow the same logic: a systematic classification of knowledge from the story that will eventually lead to a proliferation of reusable knowledge by those who are facing similar situ-ations. This approach will also reward participants with a written document with their name on it, which may en-courage them to emerge from anonymity and give them a sense of contributing to the public domain.
44
Section IIIStories behind stories
45
Click here to watch filmon youtube
The Story Behind the Story Tutto quello che posso contenere/ Everything that I can contain
Name Age FromLuna Cesari, age 28, Terni, Italy
ScriptA journey creates room inside, it enlarges the borders, it intertwines many lives and makes them elastic.
2012, finally I’m back in Turkey.A University experience. A recent degree, an unlimited
love for photography […]We are a team of heritage experts and art historians.
I bring along my inseparable camera. I’m eager to give my contribution.
I would like to report the decline of certain areas near
46
the Syria’s borders. Here, my photos don’t tell only my story. […]
Turkey taught me to see.A good lens can help shooting a beautiful photo, but
the depth of the field is nothing without another kind of depth. This journey gave it to me. I made room inside me.
Facilitated by Melting Pro, Italy
Excerpts from Storyteller’s EvaluationsOne of many reasons that lead me to explore my narrative skills is the need to tell something not just for me. I want to turn away from the dangerous mechanism of self refer-ential without, however, setting aside the personal aspect of the narrative.
ThemesMulticulturalism – Negotiating Difference Job – Work ExperiencesAdventure – Discovery – Taking Risks Culture Shock
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorLuna is a contemporary art and photography historian. When attending the workshop she was involved in a part-nership with CHAOS of Terni, a multipurpose centre dedicated to promotion of the arts and culture. Every year, in September, she organizes an international festival that gives space to the performing arts and to contemporary theatre.
Her passion for photography was born out of an innate predisposition to narrate, the need to create a minor mem-ory, made up of close ups and interactions, the unfolding of a process that has something nostalgic, but also deeply human. The images beautifully made and selected are the core of her deep thoughts, central to the story/stories she is telling.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsLuna addressed the project goals by telling a story of a university working experience she made in 2012 in Turkey. The travel is just the tip of the iceberg of another kind of journey. The one she made with and inside herself.
47
Her love for photography was a 360° added value for the realization of the story itself. Firstly for the quality of the images Luna used, secondly for the strong metaphor of lenses/eyes/depth she build the story upon.
48
The Story Behind the Story For Aron
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age From:Ashley Kinard, Age 19, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
ScriptI held up three fingers and spelled T-H-R-E-E with my Scrabble tiles. You smiled and grabbed a handful of tiles, spelling out H-A-R-O-M. Harom… For over almost an hour, you taught me your language, and I taught you mine…Although our time together and activities may seem mun-dane to other people, it was incredibly special to me. I know you were shy and didn’t fit in the best with the other kids your age. And I was thousands of miles away from my home and other native English-speakers. I’m glad we were
49
able to spend that time together for some moments of peace without having to try to communicate with anyone. I’m glad we had each other to feel at home with.
Facilitated by StoryCenter, USA
Excerpts from Storyteller’s EvaluationsAshley noted that the important shift you make as a digital storyteller is realizing ways that an international experi-ence can help you move between being an outsider and an insider. You may feel like an outsider a lot of the time, es-pecially if you don’t know the language, but as her experi-ence with the little boy Aron showed there are lots of ways to communicate and make new friends. She says, ‘You don’t have to be an outsider when you visit a new place. You can learn things with people, not just about them.’ Re-garding her experience training as a peer DST facilitator, Ashley said the experience helped her use her skills as a video editor to help others. She believes it is important to honour other people’s personal and creative choices and said she felt we did a good job of helping people tell their own stories – letting them decide what story to tell and how they wanted to tell it.
Themes Language CopingBeing Shy – Combatting Shyness
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorAshley’s story is about her first experience in another country, when at age 16 she was invited to teach English at a childrens’ Bible camp in Hungary. She came from a conservative family and hadn’t much knowledge about the ways people in other communities or cultures lived their lives. Ashley says her time in Hungary made her a more open-hearted and open-minded person.
Ever since she was a little girl Ashley has enjoyed mak-ing videos about her travels – something she began around age 10 taking car trips with her family. But her experience in Hungary changed her perspective as a film maker: instead of recording people and places as an outsider she is now focused on finding and sharing peoples’ stories to make them more accessible to one another across geo-
50
graphical and cultural distances. Today she is a film pro-duction student learning to make documentaries. In the summer she will be an English language tutor in Taiwan and in the fall she goes to Lyons, France for a semester of college.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsAshley’s story is important for two reasons: first, because it illustrates how guided reflection and storywork about a specific memory can help someone articulate insights that have been hard to explain in words. As she talked through her story – while making it and also afterwards, when sharing the finished video – she was able to identify specif-ic things she learned about herself and how her approach to new people and situations has changed as a result of the relationship she and the Hungarian boy built together.
A second important dimension of this project is the be-hind-the-scenes story: after making her own video Ashley trained to be a peer facilitator helping other students make digital stories. One of our project goals is to use the DST workshop experience as a framework for preparing stu-dents to help one another process their international expe-riences through creative expression and through ongoing dialogue.
51
The Story Behind the Story Do outro lado do oceano
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age FromSofia, age 14, São Paulo, Brazil.
ScriptMy name is Sofia and I am quite shy. In 2011, I went to Indonesia to participate in an international conference. Upon learning of the trip, I was worried: I would have to talk to a lot of people I didn’t know. Despite being shy, what most impressed me was the contact with people from other countries. One day we met a Vietnamese woman, who seemed to have good stories to tell, but how to talk to her was a big problem. We were in a room with computers and I had an idea: we chatted and it was great because I
52
could use the translator and write in English. I was talking across the ocean.
Facilitated by Museu da Pessoa, Brazil
Excerpts from Storyteller’s Evaluations‘I’m glad I took part in this workshop and have got to know all these people who are very special. I’ve learned a lot from all of them.’
‘I’ve learned that everyone has a story to tell, we just need to be open to listen to them.’ ‘I loved listening to the stories and editing my own video.’
‘The process was very interesting: from a long story to a defined script.’
ThemesGrowing UpBeing Shy – Combatting Shyness LanguageMulticulturalism – Negotiating Difference Adventure – Discovery – Taking Risks
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorSofia Araújo is a young person aged 14 who is taking part in the ‘edu-communication’ ‘Cala a Boca Já Morreu’ project in São Paulo. A central feature of the project is a focus on the principles of participative management, and it is in-volved in a number of youth conferences committed to de-veloping communication and educational activities. Sofia had already had audio-visual production experience and had a critical understanding of communication in general, and this helped her to participate in the project
Her experience overseas was made possible by her participation in the edu-communication project. In addi-tion to the conference she mentions in the story, she has also taken part in other participative projects representing youth collectives focused on the environment, education and communication.
How the facilitator felt the story addressed the project goalsSofia paid a great deal of attention to the stories but, being quite obviously shy, she made little contribution to the scripts of the stories told by the other participants.
53
Sofia’s story directly addresses the objectives of the pro-ject for three main reasons: 1. Sofia chose to speak about one characteristic – her shyness, which could be recog-nized as being a barrier in the work field. By reflecting on the important story that she wished to share, she chose to talk about how she confronted her shyness and managed to overcome the challenge she was up against. The story enhances her personality, what she has learned, and her abilities. 2. The story shows that experiences overseas can be important to the personal development of young peo-ple. Contexts outside the comfort zone, when dealing with personal challenges, can be environments that are condu-cive to personal development. 3. Sofia found it very diffi-cult to share her story, so in this sense the Digital Story-telling methodology as a tool was very successful: the story was developed, and the final product eventually achieved was excellent, showing characteristics that were very im-portant to the young person in terms of her difficulties and behaviour in challenging situations.
54
The Story Behind the Story No Name
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age FromEvelyn Yobana Tiqe Calderon, Colombia
ScriptEvelyn describes damaging stereotypes about her country, Colombia – ‘cocaine and Pablo Escobar’ – and about Is-lam: ‘they are chauvinist and they subjugate women. I also confused Islam with terrorism.’
Then: “Surprise!!! Cape Town has a large Muslim pop-ulation and the English schools are full of students from Libya and Saudi.”
She describes close friendships with fellow students, as well as her Muslim teachers and adoptive family and con-
55
cludes: ‘None of them is a terrorist, none of them approves the violence, none of them thinks women are inferior. None of them discriminate against non-Muslim people. So my own experience demolished the stereotype in my mind.”
Facilitated byDigital Storytelling South Africa with Cape Peninsula Uni-versity of Technology, South Africa
Excerpts from Storyteller’s EvaluationsWhat I like most in this workshop was the possibility to tell my own story. It was amazing to play director. I also liked to use my own pictures and videos. (questionnaire)
I did it with all my heart. Really, I was so emotional. You know it was not only a video, it was like with all my heart because he’s like my family, my friend. He’s really impor-tant for me in this video. I cried when I was doing the video, a lot of the time when I was writing, I cried because some of the people that appear in the video are not here anymore. They are in their countries and when I remem-ber, I remembered the moments. Ja, because you like take all the memories and put together. It’s a collage of my memories. You know all the pictures, it’s all the emotions, about ah, ja, I remember this day on the beach. Ah, yes, remember this dinner. Ah, remember – and it was a lot of emotion. (feedback after screening of movie)
Themes: Multiculturalism Negotiating difference Disrupting stereotypes Food, familyAdventure and Discovery, Language.
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorEvelyn is one of the students from the private language school International House, which attracts young people from around the world to come and learn English while also enjoying the life of a beautiful, cosmopolitan city. Her story stood out for us, not only for its technical skill but also for the enthusiasm and courage with which she em-braced the opportunity to tell a story about how the ex-perience of studying abroad had changed her life and her perceptions of the world and other people.
56
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsOf all the stories in this project, this was the one that most clearly met our goals of challenging stereotypes and harm-ful assumptions. We were careful not to prompt partici-pants specifically to tell such stories, but Evelyn came into the workshop with a very clear idea and passion for this story. After the workshop the stories were screened public-ly for all the students and staff from International House, so many of the people she named were in the audience, and everyone knew them; the screening was a very moving experience.
57
The Story Behind the Story Finding My Passion
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age FromLaura Wahlhutter, Age 26, Austria
ScriptWhen Laura was 20, she went abroad with Cultural Care, an au pair exchange-program. She worked as an au pair in Tenafly, New Jersey, and took care of two kids (10 and 11 years old). Since the kids spent their holidays on sum-mer-camps or in Florida with their grandparents, Laura had a lot of free time. It was her chance to figure out what she really wanted to do and to learn and to try out new things. In her story, Laura talks about finding her passion for photography and how hard it was to leave a place she started to love during her year abroad.
58
Facilitated by Digital story Vienna, Austria
Excerpts from Storyteller’s EvaluationsTaking part in the story-abroad workshop, looking through my pictures and looking back at all these memories, the good and bad experiences I made during this year for me was pretty intense. I think it is still fair to say that this was one of the best years I had and the workshop reminded me of how I miss New York City and living abroad in general. So I decided to be adventurous once more: Currently I am applying for a Master’s Program in Sweden which I hope-fully will get admitted to.
ThemesGrowing UpArt and CreativityReturn – After the Experience
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorLaura studied Transcultural Communication in Graz, but after a while she figured out that she did not really enjoy it. She decided to take a gap year and applied to the Cultural Care au pair program. Laura says that the year abroad, not being surrounded by people who have known her for a long time was the perfect chance to make a fresh start. It helped her to appreciate the things she had (family, home and friends) and to discover herself at the same time. By spending a lot of time all by herself in New York she learned to be independent, more self-confident and able to make up her own mind ‘… which looking back now was probably the best experience I gained during that year and it still helps me in my professional life.’
Back home Laura moved to Vienna, studied Develop-ment Studies and continued with a Masters Program in Social Work and graduated with honours in 2015. Current-ly she works as a social counsellor at an emergency ac-commodation centre for homeless people in Vienna.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsLaura’s story is a good example of how living abroad can change your life. Like many other storytellers in the pro-ject she was at a point where she didn’t really know what to do with her life, her academic career turning out to be not
59
quite what she had expected. So she took her chances and went abroad – her first time away from home for a long period (also a typical experience for all participants). And abroad the unexpected happened… not only did she build lasting friendships (again, something most storytellers have in common) and managed the tasks she had visual-ized (taking care of the kids and the household, improving her language skills), but she reinvented herself, found out about her creativity and her talents, increased her self-es-teem and self-confidence. Laura’s story could inspire and encourage other young people to take the risks, to be open-minded and to undertake mobility.
60
The Story Behind the Story “AAFS”
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age FromSophie Gilbert, age 21, UK
ScriptI’m Gilb. 21 years old. aha I’m a party lover every night is a Friday as long as you try hard enough and you’re committed. This is who I am. Trouble. Reckless. Self destructive. My thoughts contradict my words and my words contradict my actions. My life is chaos and I’m just lost. This busy lifestyle where I never have a second to think is my perfect distraction from working my life out. As far as I’m concerned this bunch of misfits is my family … blood means nothing.
[…]
61
I’m Sophie I am respectful and I respect myself. I am trust wor-thy. I am kind, loving, caring, considerate, strong, motivated and full of flaws. But I’m me. Africa has a way of getting under your skin and letting you find yourself as long as you let it. As Tommy says AAFS AFRICA AINT FOR SISSIES
Themes:Growing upFamilyAdventure – Discovery – Taking RisksCopingReturn – After the ExperiencePlace and Nature
Facilitated by DigiTales with the University of Brighton, UK, supported by Goldsmiths, University of London
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorSophie Gilbert is 21 years old. She lives in a ‘Foyer’ in Newhaven, on the south coast of England – a supported housing scheme, managed by the Salvation Army Hous-ing Association (SAHA) that provides self-catered rooms/flats with support services to young people aged 16–24 who are experiencing homelessness. ‘Open Talent’ is an initiative that is focused on spotting, coaching and pro-moting young people’s talents and it is through this that Sophie – and other young people from three Foyers in England (Doncaster, Newhaven and Braintree) – gained the opportunity to travel abroad and then reflect and share their experiences through Digital Storytelling. At the time of attending the workshop, Sophie wasn’t in education or employment, but she is very interested in all aspects of the music industry. She had had limited experience using PCs and had never used a Macintosh before the workshop, although she had some experience of Photoshop. She had never used video editing software before.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsSophie responded extremely positively to the Digital Storytelling workshop. She reported that she’d gained new skills in terms of using ICT, communication and in response to the statement “I have improved my ability to communicate my story of my experiences abroad to oth-
62
ers”, she scored it 10 (i.e. ‘strongly agree’). When asked how she would use her new skills in the future, she respond-ed, “My current plan is to use it to make more digital stories – I already have two ideas!”. When asked how she would use her own digital story in the future, she said: “I will use it to explain what Africa did for me personally. I will show people who helped make the trip happen what it meant and that everything that went into this trip was appreciated and made a difference”. She scored 10 against the question “How did you feel about the experience of the workshop and what you creat-ed? 1 is very unhappy and 10 is very happy”.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsSophie’s story not only describes the experiences she had during her trip to South Africa, but also is a deeply reflec-tive piece about her own personal journey. She begins her story describing her life as ‘chaos’; she charts her journey and identifies points of transformation and change within her. On day 5 she speaks about losing a snake skin that had been given to her by one of the project leaders: “I believe that Tommy gave me it as a sign of change and that I lost it be-cause after change happens you need to let go of what was”. This new self-awareness that is articulated in Sophie’s story is key to her putting to use the new technical, creative and communication skills that she developed in the workshop, that will help her find her next steps, whether in future learning or employment. Her commitment to sharing her story will contribute to the project’s aspirations in en-hancing the visibility of young people to influence policy change within the EU’s youth programmes.
63
Click here to watch filmon youtube
The Story Behind the Story A film by Gustav Hällegårdh
Name Age FromGustav Hällegårdh, age 20, Stockholm, Sweden
ScriptI have been travelling my whole life. A lot of times I felt lost and I’ve been scared, especially for what other people think. Two years ago I was in Singapore to attend the Bap-tist World Conference. In one of the workshop, the speaker asked the audience: “What is marriage?” Without hesita-tion, I rose from my chair and I said: Love has no gender. A marriage is between two individuals. A woman and a woman, a man and a man or a woman and a man. Marriage is simply just a declaration of love. The rest of the audience did not agree with my opinion. That was, without doubt,
64
one of the worst hours I ever spent in a room. But I stood my ground and it gave me perspective. I have never been as certain of my opinion as I was when I left that room. Those days I spent outside Sweden have often been some of the most giving, exiting and meaningful I have ever experienced.
Facilitated byThe Stockholm School of Arts, Sweden
Excerpts from Storyteller’s EvaluationsMy impression of this workshop is very positive, I have learnt a lot, especially digital competence. By sharing my experience from the Baptist Youth World Conference in Singapore with others, I have processed this experience deeper. I am now applying for an Erasmus+ EVS-project abroad for the next year, which will increase my compe-tence.
Themes:Adventure – Discovery – Taking Risks Culture Shock
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorGustav has participated in Stockholm School of Arts Erasmus+ youth exchanges about Gender issues and also taking part in a “Baptist Youth World Conference” in Singapore. He has enrolled in theatre and musical courses in Stockholm School of Arts since he was a young child. He has previous experiences of working with live perfor-mances. Gustav has worked on stage professionally, as a musician and also off stage during his musical training. He is currently working part time at a café and is applying for an EVS-project.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsGustav is brave enough to share his story about his travel abroad, when meeting a new culture and failing to commu-nicate in this culture and learning from that experience. The aim with this project is facing other cultures by work-ing or studying abroad. Gustav’s story is a great example of how you can grow from less comfortable situations and increase your self-esteem
65
The Story Behind the Story FLY
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age FromKlara Schouwink, age 21, Munich, Germany
ScriptA girl who lives in a small town in Germany where she goes everywhere in a bike, has a lot of dreams while she grows up. One day she decides to go abroad and to explore the outside world in a mobility experience. Travelling south she arrives in Portugal to live in its capital: Lisbon. In this big and unknown city, she experiences a sense of confusion and feels lost, with no direction. One day, she decides to act and gets a bike in which she now goes every-where. It was a turning point. Now she may choose when
66
and where to go. Driving her bike allowed Klara to face the confusion and to be in charge again.
Facilitated by Media Shots, Portugal
Excerpts from Storyteller’s Evaluations“Last week, in a workshop about digital storytelling we were challenged to sum up our experiences abroad. The first step was talking thinking talking. Which important impressions I had? And what are the feelings I want to tell in the video? For me it meant to take shots with my bike in the pouring rain or motivating Stani to take a metro ride with me just for the pictures. In the beginning of the week I did not believe it. But on Friday around lunchtime everybody had a video ready to present. The stories turned out to be as diverse as the pictures used to illustrate them. But all of them showed a very personal view on a personal experience. About questioning yourself, about the differ-ences between your country and the life you have abroad and about overcoming the confusion… about diving in a new culture and what it can cause… And after all 95 sec-onds were enough.”
Themes:Growing UpAdventure – Discovery – Taking Risks DiscomfortJourney – Navigation
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorKlara come from Munich, Germany, where she studied and where her friends also live. She has two siblings. She believes that growing up in such a small and friendly place has a lot of good things, but as she started to grow up she became curious about other places and other realities. At this age she has to choose what her future profession will be. She thought she would like to be a psychologist but be-fore continuing her studies, as most of her friends in Ger-many, she takes a year to herself, just to grow up and think better about the future. An experience in another country is a great opportunity and the European Union provides a lot of options. She decided to do a EVS – European Volun-tary Service experience in Lisbon, Portugal. She is still in the middle of the experience, trying to put in order a lot of totally new things. And is this process, among many other
67
questions, she wonders if a degree in Psychology will be her choice after all.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsDuring the workshop, Klara, 19 years old, was going through the first months of her mobility experience. She wanted to address her feelings of being confused and lost. Since her arrival in Lisbon she couldn’t understand the language, the signs or directions. But, still in the middle of her mobility adventure, she really couldn’t see a turning point for her story. Then the exercise of constructing the narrative about these months helped to understand the importance of the bike she had just bought.
At the workshop – through reflection – she was able to find out that her new bicycle was a tool to be autono-mous, self-sufficient and also a way to connect her with the streets and people of this new city. At this point she didn’t feel lost anymore. She realised her own strategy.
Her multimedia language process was also interest-ing. During these days we were able to see Klara filming around the city, taking shots with her bike in the pouring rain or motivating a friend to take a metro ride with her just for the pictures.
68
The Story Behind the Story Cerezal
Click here to watch filmon youtube
Name Age FromGeorgeta, age 31, Romania
ScriptGeorgeta (originated from Romania) has lived for two years in Madrid. One day, she visited a small village in Spain. She was intrigued by the way she would be wel-comed. In the village, they were no foreigners. The trip to the village was very emotional. The beauty of the landscape was astonishing. Once in the village, she was introduced to a huge number of friendly people, attracted by their native lands. It was the first trip of many.
69
Facilitated byPerspectives, Belgium
Excerpts from Storyteller’s EvaluationsThe participant has decided to talk about her discovery inside the destination country. She decided to go to Spain for family reasons, and not primarily for professional or educative reasons. For personal reasons, she preferred not to talk about the trip from her country of origin, but to focus on the best memories of her experience of travel abroad.
Themes:Coping – Culture Shock – Place and Nature
Background on Storyteller by FacilitatorGeorgetta has a complicated experience of immigration. Coming from Romania, she married a Spanish man and lived in Spain before going to Belgium. Now she’s unem-ployed and trying to find a job, but has no qualifications. She’s now learning basic ICT in a training centre for wom-en. Through his story, we could see her difficulties being a stranger in her husband’’s homeland (nevertheless, the story describes a happy place), and the fact that she wasn’t really happy in her past life, nor in her hometown, Bucha-rest, nor in Madrid.
What she describes about herself in the story, is her desire to have human contact, as she said ‘In this village I met more people in one day than in my previous life’.
How Facilitator Felt the Story Addressed the Project GoalsThis story demonstrates how the process has increased the participant’s confidence and self-esteem, when it consid-ers the fact that she could cope with the discovery of a village where she’s the only stranger was a positive experi-ence. It focuses on the importance of social relations in a working/studying/living experience in a foreign country.
70
Section IVPrompts – Top Tips and Handy Hints
71
Written prompts
1. Looking back on your experience studying/working abroad, what do you wish you had known before you started? Write a letter of advice to your earlier self.
2. Imagine you are your own employer who funded this trip abroad. Write a report outlining the ways in which it was a successful or unsuccessful investment. Focus in particular on what you learnt that can help you in your employment.
3. A new word that made an impact on you.4. ‘My first day abroad’. Describe the emotion and the
experiences you had on your first day.5. Write a postcard to your best friend:
– who are you, why are you going abroad? – are you a child of revolution 89–91? – what was the biggest change to yourself in your time abroad/migration – how was your identity changed? – what was it like coming back/visiting your old home country
6. ‘Make Your Mind Up’: Participants are asked to write about a time in their lives when they made an impor-tant decision. They are free to describe it as they wish, but they are limited to exactly 50 words. This game ful-fills two purposes; it looks at the theme of important decision making in life and the feelings that were the result of the decision. Secondly, it attempts to instill in the participant the value of tightly edited text.
7. Love and Hate. List and share five things you loved and five things you hated about your experience aboard.
72
Conversation / raise prompts
• What is the most significant change you’ve experienced in your life as a result of your experience abroad?
• What is the most valuable and/or unexpected new skill you developed as a result of your trip?
• The first ‘cultural shock’?
• What wasn’t so different after all?
• Line up: Family lines, stories of your mother/grand mother.
• Which experience abroad is still ‘with you’?
• Give your friend a tip to prepare him/her to a travel abroad
73
Object / pictures
1. What is the most precious picture you took during your time abroad? Tell us about it.
2. If you were only allowed to bring home one object, what would it be and why?
3. A photo from your mobile phone that tells a story about that time.
4. An object that you took with you. Why it wasn’t left behind?
5. Photo-language . We use photo-language technique to help the participants to tell a story. We have photos on tables and ask participants to choose one to three pictures that affect them. Then we ask them to explain their choices, and if there is the outline of a story, we invite them to consider this choice for the rest of the workshop. This activity serves as an ice-breaker and as creative activity. Images : 168 photos (cc licensed) showing very different situations (everyday life, land-scape, war and violence, …). Downloadable at: http://www.palabre.be/transfer/photolangage.zip
6. Tell the story behind the object brought by the partici-pants on your left.
7. Tell the story behind the picture you have brought.
74
“Other”: (Sounds, Act, Smell, Food and Change)
• Tell us about the most memorable meal you had during your time abroad.
• Tell us about a gesture, habit or custom you discovered that surprised, confused or charmed you.
• A food recipe that you brought home from abroad.
• One example of music that kept you company those days out and why.
• Documentary/movie extracts. According to the theme that we want addressed through the personal stories, we show the documentary/movie extracts to participants. We ask questions to launch the debate and to enable people to position themselves on the subject. Some of these extracts are portraits. We then ask participants to imagine the personality of these people. We also ask if participants if they remind them of people they know and suggest inventing stories about them.
• Let participants go outside and make a picture evoking two ‘words’ discussed by the
• group (e.g brainstorming on the emotions felt during the experience, and choose the two most recurrent ie. ‘relationships’ ‘friendship’ ‘melancholia’). Once back, share the pictures (or drawings) done and let partici-pants guess what the emotions are.
• A colour that reminds you the experience abroad.
75
Section V Facilitator Biographies
76
Antonia SilvaggiItaly
Her dual British-Roman nature inspired a love for inter-nationalisation and for Europe. With a background as an archaeologist, she has developed a stratigraphy as project manager. She is an insatiable researcher on key compe-tences, audience development and new cultural models. She is passionately fond of museums and of digital story-telling, [email protected]
Barbara Cäcilia SupperAustria
Co-author of encyclopedias. Barbara taught German as a foreign language to immigrants and asylum-seekers for over a decade and developed curricula for German as a foreign/second language. Project-collaborator at ‘110 years of female academics at the University of Vienna’ (Center for Gender Equality and Diversity, University of Vien-na). Secretary of Verein Digital Story Vienna; co-hosting/facilitating digital storytelling-projects (Pädagogische Fachhochschule Wien, Wir sind Wien Festival der Bezirke: Wiener Geschichten)[email protected]
Brooke HesslerUSA
Brooke is a professor of writing and multimodal composi-tion at Oklahoma City University. She teaches communi-ty-based courses in interdisciplinary research and writing, visual rhetoric, digital storytelling, and public art on the institution’s campuses in the U.S. and in Singapore and researches the uses of digital media for critical reflection and integrative [email protected]
77
Carin GranathSweden
Carin is a Media teacher at Speaking Youth which is an activity within the Stockholm School of Arts, based on children’s and young people’s own creativity and through their personal storytelling. It may be for example in the form of a film, an animation, a photo or a digital story. Speaking Youth started in 2004 and Carin has since then met over 10 000 children and young people through var-ious workshops and classes. Carin has a background in theatre and film, both in practice and in theory, and has a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in film, Stockholm Univer-sity [email protected]
Carol MisorelliBrazil
Graduated in Business from the University of São Paulo in 2003 and in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo in 2005. Coordinator of the ‘One Million Life Stories’ initiative from 2006 to 2008. Collaborator with the Museum of the Person since [email protected]
Daniel WeinshenkerUSA
Daniel has been telling stories and teaching others to tell stories for more than ten years. After leaving the San Fran-cisco Bay Area, where he was born and raised, he taught creative writing for three years while working on his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He specializes in developing projects that explore the im-pact of digital storytelling for youth and within the health sector, and has also done considerable work with local museums and radio/television [email protected]
78
Daniela GachagoSouth Africa
Daniela is a senior lecturer in the Centre for e-Learning at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She holds a PHD in Education from the University of Cape Town and an MEd from the University of Botswana. Her research interest lies in the use of emerging technologies to trans-form teaching and learning in Higher Education, with a particular focus on social justice education. She has facil-itated digital storytelling workshops for staff and students at CPUT since [email protected]
David BodartBelgium
David Bodart is project coordinator in socio-professional inclusion. He was coordinator of projects linked to ICT, mobility, socio-professional inclusion and digital story-telling. He has taught audiovisual techniques (sound and light, audio editing). His initial training was in audiovisual production, and sciences of education. He’s now learning computer sciences. He’s involved in several European pro-jects, as partner or coordinator [email protected]
Erwin SchmitzbergerAustria
Erwin is a media educator and works at an adult education centre. Founder and chairman of the first digital story-telling club in Austria: Verein digital story vienna. Collab-orated with different departments of the City of Vienna, university and college of higher education of Vienna. Organized different youth projects with migrants between 2010 and 2014 with Volkshochschule and JUBIZ Wien. Work with migrants was mostly in the field of language improvement (CARITAS, ISOP). Further aspects are dig-ital literacy (In.Bewegung, Graz), community storytelling (Basis.Kultur.Wien) and health (collaboration with organ-izations for drug prevention and health centres). Curated digital storytelling-retrospectives (USA and GB) at Vienna’s short film festival for two years in a [email protected]
79
Eunice Ndeto IvalaSouth Africa
Eunice is an Associate professor and Head of Research Department in the Centre for e-Learning at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Previously a project manager at the Media in Education Trust Africa, an Educa-tional Specialist at the South African Institute for Distance Education and a Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. She holds a BEd Honours degree from the University of Nairobi, Kenya; a MEd degree in Com-puter-based Education from University of Natal, Durban, South Africa; and a PhD in Culture, Communication and Media Studies from University of KwaZulu Natal. Her research focus is in ICT-mediated teaching and learning in developing contexts and has done research on digital storytelling since [email protected]
Eva DarellSweden
Eva is the Development Manager for International Co-operation and coordinates the EU-projects at Stockholm School of Arts. She has coordinated and organized 30 International projects since 2005, from the writing appli-cation process to the final reports and budget accounting. She also organises the practical workshops and project management activities in the projects. Eva has a back-ground in theatre and as a Drama teacher & project lead-er and has organised & produced great Performing Art Events and Festivals both international as national. Edu-cation: Degree of Bachelor of Arts with a major in theatre, Stockholm University 1997. [email protected]
Federica PesceItaly
From the abstraction of philosophical thinking to that of numbers she keeps on trying to square the circle between cultural content and complex financial plans. She often travels around Europe, developing project ideas with cu-riosity and passion. Her beloved challenge is the transfor-mation of information into knowledge through the prac-tice of digital storytelling and participatory [email protected]
80
Francois KinetBelgium
Francois learned cinematography years ago at Universi-ty of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. After a career as an audio-visual technician in the cinema industry, he now teaches unemployed people at Perspectives in Belgium, to improve self-confidence through group dynamics and real working situations. His skills are in audio-visual media, graphic design, programming, web design and photogra-phy. He is interested in sports, cinema and [email protected]
Helena LopesPortugal
She is author and co-author of three documentaries. She received the Early Career Award for Best Feature Articles from the Portuguese Press Club. Her work was included in an anthology of Portuguese press journalism for the period 1986 to 1996. She has experience of film production and the organization of events such as the Photo Journal-ism Visão BES Awards, for which she also worked as press advisor and set up a website. She obtained her Masters degree in Communication at Lisbon’s ISCTE Universi-ty. Her Masters dissertation, titled “Stories of life”, was a qualitative study of digital storytelling, social networking websites and media literacy. [email protected]
Inês RodriguesPortugal
Journalist and TV producer, experienced in radio and ENG – Electronic Gathering News, worked for the main TV Channels and independent Production Companies in Portugal, in daily news and information programs. She collaborated with several independent Production Compa-nies, producing, writing and editing features, news stories and institutional films. She was part of the Press Office of the High Commission on Immigration and Ethnic Minor-ities, where she sensitized the public to the increase of cultural diversity in Portugal. She is currently a freelance Consultant and Content Manager collaborating, namely
81
with the communication department of a governmental program, directed at youngsters in risk of social exclusion. The multiple formats of new media are her biggest interest at [email protected]
Jack EvansUK
Senior technical adviser for practical TV & film courses at Goldsmiths. As well as facilitating current BA & MA degree programs, he is involved in course development in vari-ous areas of the department. Shortly after the workshop is complete he is flying out to Lagos to run a short docu-mentary filmmaking workshop at Pan-Atlantic University. Outside of education Jack enjoys a versatile life ‘part-tim-ing’ as a freelance filmmaker, sound designer, guitarist, recording engineer & Photoshop illustrator. He has previously worked on DigiTales projects run at Gold-smiths’ & at Sterling University, [email protected]
Jamal ManadBelgium
Jamal Manad is a trainer in the field of socio-professional inclusion in Liège (Belgium) for almost 10 years. He has a basic training as a psychologist and is active in associ-ations and sport. A passionate researcher in the cultural sector, social and economic, he is involved in intercultur-al dialogue, entrepreneurship abroad, and promotion of promising new political and economic prospects, such as the participatory economics and alternative finance. [email protected]
Joe Lambert USA
As founder and executive director of Storycenter, I oversee the general vision, and strategic development of the organ-ization, and remain an active facilitator of workshops. I am responsible for overseeing long term partnerships. I also develop new curriculum, and curriculum resources, and
82
disseminate new programmatic efforts. I am also the pub-lic spokesperson for the organization, and oversee media relations and public relations efforts. [email protected]
Karen Worcaman Brazil
Founder and Director of the Museu da Pessoa, has a de-gree in History with MA in Linguistics at the Federal Uni-versity of Rio de Janeiro. An Ashoka Fellow since 1999 and in 2004 became Ashoka’s Global Fellowship member. She is also co-editor of ‘History Spoken: memory, networking and social change’, ‘Memories and Legacies: Jewish immi-grants in Rio de Janeiro’ and has written several interna-tional publications and [email protected]
Laura Bove Italy
Passionately fond of photography, Laura likes communi-cating through images and gives a creative touch to MeP’s activities and products. Facilitator in digital storytelling courses, she is an expert in applied research, planning and coordination of socio-cultural initiatives at national and European level. Communications officer for Melting Pro Lab and Learning, she is the social soul of the group. She likes rock music, cycling and yes, hers are natural curls. [email protected]
Mariana Caselato Brazil
Graduated in Film Studies from the University of São Pau-lo in 2010. General Secretary, educator and member of the ‘Cala-boca já morreu – porque nós também temos o que dizer!’ project since 1996. Graphic Recorder with ‘Entre-Linhas’ collective since 2013. Educator with the Museum of the Person since [email protected]
83
Mark Dunford UK
Mark Dunford is the Principal Investigator on STORYA. He is now an Associate Dean in the School of Arts and Dig-ital Industries at the University of East London. From 2012 to 2016, he was based at the University of Brighton where he led digital storytelling projects SILVER STORIES and STORYA and worked as the Academic Director of the Fourth International Visual Methods Conference in 2015. He has previously worked at the BBC, BFI and Arts Coun-cil England. He is a founding Director of DigiTales and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. [email protected]
Mark Watson UK
Mark studied Philosophy at the University of North Lon-don as a mature student where he became President of the Students’ Union and National President of the Mature Students’ Union. After University Mark trained as a Ca-reers Guidance Adviser and quickly specialised in working with young people who had experienced disadvantage. Mark has worked in the Foyer Movement since 2002 where he has pioneered strengths based, ‘advantaged thinking’ approaches to supporting homeless young people. In rec-ognition of his work Mark was featured as one of 21 stories illustrating the achievements of the foyer movement. Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. [email protected]
Pam Sykes South Africa
Pam is the founder and lead facilitator for Digital Story-telling South Africa. Originally trained as a journalist, she holds an MSc in in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Edinburgh and is completing her PhD at the University of the Western Cape. She has worked with universities and NGOs across South Africa to produce sto-ries on topics including HIV/Aids, gender-based violence prevention, teacher education and food security. [email protected]
84
Patrizia Braga Italy
Venetian and with a restless and curious soul, Patrizia loves travelling and discovering common cultural values and different professional approaches, sure that culture and education are key elements to improve the quality of life. For years she has been working with digital storytell-ing, non-formal and informal training and project man-agement at national and European [email protected]
Ray Gibson UK
Ray is a freelance photographer for indoor and outdoor arts events and is based in Brighton. He has been com-missioned by many artists, arts organisations and key arts funders and his photos appear in publications and web-sites such as Zap Art, Arts Council of England, Stradda and Greenwich & Docklands International Festival. He has also worked as an older people’s IT trainer since 2000, teach-ing computer and Internet skills, designing beginner and intermediate skills courses and setting up informal drop-in sessions in and around Brighton. [email protected]
Ross Adamson UK
Ross is senior lecturer in media studies at the University of Brighton. He has worked at the University since 2004 and teaches a range of programmes in the practice and theory of factual media. He teaches digital storytelling with first year undergraduate students and is currently studying for his doctorate at Bournemouth University investigating documentary filmmaking experiences of undergraduate [email protected]
85
Tricia Jenkins UK
Tricia is a co-founder-Director of DigiTales and a PhD Stu-dent at Middlesex University, London, researching the use of digital storytelling with older people. She started her career teaching media studies and video production in fur-ther education and has over 25 years experience as a train-er and manager of practice-based research projects. She led DigiTales’ work on the Lifelong Learning Programme-funded Silver Stories project and was lead facilitator for the UK StoryA workshops. Her international work with DigiTales has included commissions from the British Council in Greece, Israel and Aus-tralia. She lives in London and Portugal, is learning Portu-guese and spends time each December making olive [email protected]
86
A collection of essays and case studies licensed CREATIVE COMMONS, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
ISBN: 978-91-639-0587-2
Copyright © 2016StoryA project membersMelting Pro. Laboratorio per la Cultura, Project leader, (IT) Center for Digital Storytelling (USA)Media Shots (PT) University of Brighton (UK)Verein digital Story Vienna (AT) Perspectives (BE)Museo da Pessoa (BR)
Stockholm School of Arts/ Kulturskolan Stockholm (SE) Cape Peninsula University of Technology (South Africa)
Editors: Federica Pesce, Eva Darell, Isobel Creed
Production: Small WorldGraphic design: Nils JarlsboeBooklet
Co-funded by Erasmus + Programme of the European Union
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
87
88
ISBN: 978-91-639-0587-2
Co-funded by Erasmus + Programme of the European Union
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
89
